Lab 7: Let’s Make (Jake) Lunch

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What We Did
We finally attempted to cook with our briquettes, as Jake brought pork chops out to cook over Will’s weber grill (Kelly and Jaclyn don’t eat meat). We used the briquettes in two batches (roughly 10 briquettes each time), started with paper, and covered as necessary to prevent the wind from blowing it out. The briquettes worked extremely well! Once the paper had burned out, the briquettes continued to smolder, and would actually light up into flames when exposed to the wind. We were able to fully cook the pork chop in 25 minutes; the only issues with this round was the heavy smoke changed the flavor of the skin, and there were some bits of ash stuck to the pork. The second batch was added to what had already burned down, which, like our experiment burning two weeks prior, started on its own solely from the heat of the other briquettes. It appeared that the heat was a little higher or more consistent the second time around, as the pork chop cooked better and with less burnt/smoked taste. Overall, we were very happy with this result, as we proved that the briquettes can be used alone, and that they produce enough heat to actually cook food with.

What We Learned
The briquettes work well enough for cooking. They produce a lot of smoke, however, which could be detrimental if they were used indoors to fuel cooking stoves (unless paired with something like the rocket stove). It appears that the addition of minced garlic to the briquette base mixture was a good addition, as it is most likely responsible for the strong flames produced, since our previous briquettes did not burn in the same fashion.